Places to Start Acquiring Users

[andygcook]

I've never tried it myself, but I've heard people have had decent success using a combination of Twitter searches + live chat.

You can monitor people on Twitter complaining about the problem you solve, @reply them to check at your site, and then chat on oLark/SnapEngage to help convert them into users (or just do customer development).

[jelpern]

I've worked with teams at Lean Startup Machine who have done this, but you have to be careful not to get shut down by Twitter as a spammer. I like how dools did it: only targeting people with the hashtag, and writing personalized messages. Think of it from their perspective: if you received this tweet, would you flag the user as spam?

[dools]

I did this when we launched our new on-boarding process for our CMS recently[1].

I put in hashtag monitors into hootsuite for #html, #css and #wysiwyg (I've found using hashtags makes people much less annoyed at receiving a reply out of the blue) and then replied to people with a personal message who were chatting about them.

Because I could do it on my phone (ie. on the train, waiting in line) it was basically "free" time.

I wrote maybe 500 messages, got about 120 people to the page and about 57 of them put their email address in, all within 3 days of launching.

[1] http://www.decalcms.com/

[conradwa]

Love this strategy. Something like this would make for a great startup, and there actually is one doing something similar in NYC called LocalResponse. Their approach is a little different in they're focused on marketing rather than customer development or conversion.

[patrickambron]

I think SlideShare is one of the most underutilized tools out there. It's a great way to break up a lot of information (people enjoy clicking through) and they have a vibrant community. I post things up there and routinely get tens of thousands of highly relevant views.

[francesca]

"Meetup.com is one of those services that will do the job of driving traffic to your meetup if you create one." This is a great point, but I think it's also important to focus on creating successful meetups. This is a huge time commitment. Creating a consistent arena for your user base requires coordinating activities that they would love, and then reaping the benefits of customer loyalty. It's an excellent idea, but you need to devote a good deal of time to it (sometimes even a person).

[matznerd]

Great article, but in your Craigslist section, you could mention how AirBnB used Craigslist to get their first houses listed http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-do...

[patrickambron]

I read about this in the past, and I think it's a really interesting conversation. Would you consider this spam?

Personally I lean towards no. Yes, you are emailing a stranger, but in a relevant way and presumably only one time.

[khetarpal]

I like the way you put it - "Put simply, go to where your potential users are".

I would add - Think about not just users, but power users! At-least in the begining you are not looking for a regular joe, but somebody who would benefit the most by your product, and be the cheerleader moving forward.

[chicceo]

This is a great article. Thanks so much, it's nice to see new approaches as opposed to the same tactics recited over and over. Good stuff!!